


Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending)

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
Genre: Gen, POV Female Character, Remix, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: Sometimes, when a storyteller tries to wring every last drop of Stories out of themself before ever coming to an ending, the storyteller is not the only one squeezed dry.





	Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gramarye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gramarye/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Monster at the End of This Book](https://archiveofourown.org/works/297206) by [Gramarye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gramarye/pseuds/Gramarye). 



> This wound up as more of a thematic remix than a strict plot-and-story remix. I hope you find it worth reading despite the somewhat tenuous connection to the original. :)

When Soraya Khan brought Rashid Khalifa, Rashid the Storyteller, the Ocean of Notions, the Shah of Blah (for even in those days he was already beginning to be famous and in great demand) to her childhood home in the City of M to meet her parents, Mrs. Khan drew her daughter into the kitchen with a string of significant looks.

"Has he proposed?" Mrs. Khan asked as she filled and folded samosas with practiced speed. "Have you agreed?"

"Yes and yes," said Soraya, "and you can't do anything to stop us."

Mrs. Khan shook her head. "Oh, I know better than to stand in your way. You do as you please and always have. But there is a danger in tying yourself to a storyteller. If you don't make extra super sure you are the one telling the story of your life, he will start to tell it for you, and _keep_ telling it for you, whether you like it or not. So be careful! And if worse should come to worst, always remember, you are the one who can choose when to make an end. Done, finito, _khattam-shud_." She pinched a samosa shut and tossed it into the frying pan, which sizzled and smelled like the warmest dreams of home. "And then you start again."

"That won't be a problem. _We_ are telling _our_ story _together_ ," Soraya said firmly, and went back out to where Rashid was spinning jokes to make her father laugh. But perhaps her mother's words took root in the back of her mind that day and slowly, in the dark and the silence that form all ends and all beginnings, they put forth leaves and bloomed.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

This is the story that Soraya and Rashid told together:

One rainy day in the country of Alifbay, in a city so ruinously sad it had forgotten its name, a dashing young man ran into a young woman in the street and she dropped all her groceries into a puddle. As he scrambled around the pavement, trying to scoop eggs back into their shells and strain tea back into its tin, instead of shouting and steaming, she laughed.

He looked up, she looked down, and they fell in love on the spot.

They were married within the month and within the year they had a son, Haroun, to brighten their days. Rashid grew famous and traveled all over the country telling his tall, short, and winding tales, and whenever he came home Soraya greeted him with a kiss and a song.

In the heart of the sad and nameless city, their lives were filled with joy.

But the thing about stories is that they come to an end, and the ending is what lets people look back and say which parts were happy and which were sad. No one can tell the same story forever. Anyone who tries (for there are always people who try foolish things, just as there are always more fish in the sea) finds that the different strands of story blur into each other until all that's left is a pointless gray-brown blob, like the mud-churned ground at the foot of the sadness factories on the north of the nameless city.

And sometimes, when a storyteller tries to wring every last drop of Stories out of themself before ever coming to an ending, the storyteller is not the only one squeezed dry.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Rashid and Haroun always blamed Vijay Sengupta for the troubles. Oneeta Sengupta did likewise. Soraya understood the impulse: a clear villain makes a much tidier beginning. But not all shadows are sharp-edged, and most events in life are too complicated for simple explanations.

In truth, Vijay simply gave voice to words that had been growing slowly in her own heart, as Rashid's story of their marriage warped out of true like a painted star on a crumbling wall. Instead of a flower that lived and grew along with them, it stayed fixed and final, like a vise clamping wood to the breaking point. Like a grave.

"What's the use of stories that aren't even true?" Vijay asked.

Soraya had no answer.

She tried to change the story of her marriage, tried to make herself a hero who did more than wait at home, smiling and singing until her husband came home from his adventures. But Rashid didn't listen. She had listened to all his stories for years, and now when she most needed him to be her audience in turn, he never seemed to hear either her words or her silence.

(How had Rashid failed to notice that she no longer sang? Rashid who within one day of meeting her had learned that she could calculate square roots in her head, that she could chop two dozen onions without crying, that the small scar on her left elbow came from breaking a window while trying to catch her own shadow when she was three.)

"What's the use of stories that aren't even true?" Vijay Sengupta asked, and now Soraya asked the question along with him.

Rashid was telling the story of her life for her, trapping her into a role she had outgrown, and she could not spend all her years in make-believe.

He wouldn't end the tale and start anew. So she ended it for him.

When Vijay asked her to leave the sad city and start a new life at the other end of Alifbay, in the City of R where he had found a job as the chief accountant at an outrage factory, Soraya said yes, and yes, and there was nothing anyone (not Rashid, not Oneeta Sengupta, not even her beloved son) could do to stop her.

It was not a tidy ending, but she chose it and it was hers.

_Khattam-shud._

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The trouble with stories, of course, is that even people who disdain them can't escape them. We all drink from the waters of the Story Sea, and spin tales to make sense of our selves and our lives.

Vijay Sengupta was no exception. And after a time, Soraya found she disliked the story he told about her as much as she had grown to dislike Rashid's. What was the difference between a pretty wife who waited at home for a storyteller to return and a pretty mistress who waited at home for a clerk to return? Very little.

She had left her whole life behind, but she was still letting someone else tell her story. So much for starting again.

And perhaps it was the smoke from the outrage factories that hung over the City of R like a faint scent of garlic and bleach and iron, but she found herself more and more angry at Vijay and his endless complaints. She complained right back at him, louder and louder, until she realized he listened just as little as Rashid had done.

What was the use of a change that wasn't even true?

It felt like defeat to contemplate returning to the nameless city, to the house and husband and son she had left behind.

Instead, Soraya called her mother on the telephone.

"I made a mistake to leave that way," she said, "but something had to change. I can't go back to a broken story. What is left to do?"

"Start a new story, of course," said Mrs. Khan, and then held her hand over the mouth of the telephone to shout cheerfully at the other chefs in the hotel kitchen where she worked. "You do as you please, as always. And if that Rashid of yours still won't listen, you tell him _khattam-shud_ and come home to me and your father in the City of M. We will take care of you and Haroun until you find a beginning that works. Also, eat lunch. Food always helps."

Soraya laughed, and as she did the smog from the outrage factories seemed to clear and she could smell the freshness of rain striking the pavement outside her window.

"All right," she agreed, and she left a note for Vijay ("I have found," she wrote, "that there is some use for stories after all") and went to buy a train ticket.

When she reached the station and looked up at the schedule board, there was no listing for the sad and nameless city. Instead, there was a new name, one she had never seen before: Kahani.

"Their station master called this morning and said everyone over there remembered the city's name all of a sudden overnight, poof, like magic! It means story," the ticket agent said in response to her confusion. "A good name, don't you think? And a lucky sign for your trip. Cash only, pay up front."

Soraya paid and took her change.

If Kahani could remember its name, maybe by the time she reached home, Rashid would have remembered how to tell a story with her instead of for her, and remembered how and when to stop.

If not, _khattam-shud_. And she would start again.


End file.
